Smart pointers are defined in the std namespace in the <memory> header file. They are crucial to the RAII or Resource Acquisition Is Initialialization programming idiom. The main goal of this idiom is to ensure that resource acquisition occurs at the same time that the object is initialized, so that all resources for the object are created and made ready in one line of code. In practical terms, the main principle of RAII is to give ownership of any heap-allocated resource—for example, dynamically-allocated memory or system object handles—to a stack-allocated object whose destructor contains the code to delete or free the resource and also any associated cleanup code.In most cases, when you initialize a raw pointer or resource handle to point to an actual resource, pass the pointer to a smart pointer immediately. In modern C++, raw pointers are only used in small code blocks of limited scope, loops, or helper functions where performance is critical and there is no chance of confusion about ownership.The following example compares a raw pointer declaration to a smart pointer declaration.C++void UseRawPointer(){ // Using a raw pointer -- not recommended. Song* pSong = new Song(L"Nothing on You", L"Bruno Mars"); // Use pSong... // Don't forget to delete! delete pSong; }void UseSmartPointer(){ // Declare a smart pointer on stack and pass it the raw pointer. unique_ptr<Song> song2(new Song(L"Nothing on You", L"Bruno Mars")); // Use song2... wstring s = song2->duration_; //...} // song2 is deleted automatically here.As shown in the example, a smart pointer is a class template that you declare on the stack, and initialize by using a raw pointer that points to a heap-allocated object. After the smart pointer is initialized, it owns the raw pointer. This means that the smart pointer is responsible for deleting the memory that the raw pointer specifies. The smart pointer destructor contains the call to delete, and because the smart pointer is declared on the stack, its destructor is invoked when the smart pointer goes out of scope, even if an exception is thrown somewhere further up the stack.Access the encapsulated pointer by using the familiar pointer operators, -> and *, which the smart pointer class overloads to return the encapsulated raw pointer.The C++ smart pointer idiom resembles object creation in languages such as C#: you create the object and then let the system take care of deleting it at the correct time. The difference is that no separate garbage collector runs in the background; memory is managed through the standard C++ scoping rules so that the runtime environment is faster and more efficient.
